Down the dirt road down a formless mass of humanity crowded and noisy a few meters from the gates of the border. The police seem to be observing the scene with a straight face, but from time to time, truncheon blows to settle the case in the crowd. "They try to separate women from men, to put a little 'and passages in order to make room for those who return with the load," said a customs officer so too diplomatic.
almost ten and the heat of the African sun begins to be felt. Stands in the dusty a faint smell of fish. The sailors have returned from the port and, together with the peasants of the district, furnished with wooden crates and a feast or a makeshift market on the way down the pass. But passers-by do not pay too much attention. Most are quick running to the bottom of the hill, while others date back sadly the roadway in the opposite direction, dragging large bags of canvas.
Every day thirty thousand Moroccans, mostly women, are crossing the border that separates them from Melilla. Some do it to stock up on essential goods, curiously cheaper across the border. The majority, however, smuggled goods in the stores of every kind gathered around the airport Iberia. To facilitate this trade, the agreements signed between the governments of Madrid and Rabat in the seventies, which allow the movement to the inhabitants of the English enclave of Nador, the capital of the Rif region (northern Morocco), located just ten miles away. Since then, although legislation on immigration has become increasingly restrictive steps a day continue to be allowed without a visa or stamp in the passport.
Barrio Chino
Khadija wakes up every morning at five. When going out is still night. Along the double fence seven feet high to protect the fortress Shengen to reach the Barrio Chino. E 'at this point that the border for ten years Khadija, like thousands of his countrymen, comes into Spain every day to load a huge burden on the shoulders, chest and pelvis fixed by a rope. Fifty pounds of bonded goods to be transported back across the border, knees bent at ninety degrees to be able to move, slowly, one step after another. "At first I thought I would not hold up - tells the woman in her forties - to the bearer is un lavoro duro, faticoso, ma ormai mi sono abituata”. Ha appena concluso la prima staffetta della giornata, per un compenso di 50 dirham (meno di 5 euro). I carichi più pesanti, all’incirca un quintale, vengono pagati un po’ di più (anche 70 o 80 dirham). Con una smorfia di sofferenza sul viso deposita il “pacco” in un carretto arrugginito, aiutata da un paio di ragazzini, e ritorna ciondolante verso la fila in attesa, pronta a passare di nuovo dall’altra parte. Un secondo viaggio le permetterebbe di raddoppiare il magro guadagno. Ma il varco rimane aperto dalle otto all’una e solo le più resistenti riescono a compiere il tragitto due o tre volte nello stesso giorno. 
Khadija non è che una piccola leva nel complesso ingranaggio del contrabbando, che ogni anno muove da Melilla a Nador una quantità di merci pari, secondo stime non ufficiali, a 700 milioni di euro. Dal giugno del 2008 una decisione del governo di Rabat, assecondata dalle autorità spagnole, ha trasferito l’attività transfrontaliera dal Paso Beni Enzar, l’accesso principale riservato ora al traffico dei veicoli (e vietato, in teoria, al commercio), al Paso Barrio Chino, un piccolo attraversamento pedonale, nascosto allo sguardo dei turisti che transitano sempre più numerosi da un lato all’altro del confine. 
Attraverso il Barrio Chino si trasporta di tutto, dai vestiti to blankets, from household utensils to spare parts for cars, from televisions to spirits. Trafficking takes place in broad daylight, without any shame. Nobody at customs checks. The daily volume of steps calculated in this tract is between five and ten thousand (depending on the quantity of goods which from time to time by visiting the peninsula). But the facilities are very inadequate. Inadequate to accommodate such a flow. "Before, they formed huge queues," recalls Soumia, thirty-five years by bears. "A Heritage Enzar there was a lot more space. Here, the turnstiles are too narrow - the young still in a decent English smugglers - and sometimes it very difficult to go through our fixed weights on the back. We stay stuck. Thus, in addition to the barrel of the police, you might receive kicks and shoves from those who are stuck behind us. " Because the agents they hit with their batons? Soumia seems surprising ingenuity of the application. "There is a reason. Sometimes they do it because someone puts a foot out of line or because he wants to ask something. Or why not have the money to the bakchich . Customs officers of Nador, prepared to turn a blind eye to smuggling, in fact, require any carrier by a transit charge, which varies from 5 to 10 dirhams according to the volume and contenuto del carico trasportato. “Dobbiamo pagare prima per entrare a Melilla e poi, una volta caricata la merce, per tornare in Marocco. Se non lo facciamo non ci lasciano passare e ci rispediscono in fondo alla coda”, precisa Soumia, che non può permettersi di rimanere senza lavoro, neanche per un giorno. 
“Uno spettacolo da terzo mondo”
Nella parte melillense del Barrio Chino, a duecento metri dall’accesso al territorio marocchino, un ampio piazzale in terra battuta funge da centro di smistamento per i prodotti in arrivo dal porto. Decine di furgoni stracolmi, surrounded by porters who are awaiting the delivery of the cargo, the goods deposited on the ground already packed. Amid the confusion and the constant coming and going can be glimpsed cloths, shoes, linens and even tires, eagerly collected by couriers. Crushed by the burdens it is undermined by extreme heat, the women barely reach the human chain on their way to Nador. They make up in single file along the border fence. With the chin touches your knees. As turtles nailed to the ground by the weight of a shell too bulky. 
The Civil Guard officers who control the transit to the border takes place in small teams of at most five or six units. Even loro si fanno scrupoli ad usare il manganello. “Se c’è troppa calca i marocchini non riescono a riscuotere le mance e chiudono i cancelli. Questa gente, poi, finisce per perdere la testa e diventa incontrollabile”, sembra discolparsi un poliziotto a pochi metri dalla dogana. Spinto dall’orgoglio, o più probabilmente da un impeto di indignazione, un collega aggiunge: “nessuno ha il coraggio di fare qualcosa e lasciano a noi la patata bollente. Chi gestisce il contrabbando è protetto e può permettersi di sfruttare questa gente, pagandola una miseria. E’ uno spettacolo da terzo mondo, proprio qui in casa nostra!”.
Eppure il comune di Melilla e la Delegazione Iberian government had announced in June 2008, at the time of the transfer of the cross-border flow Paso Barrio Chino, the construction of special facilities to improve working conditions for Moroccan carriers, defined by the local press "inhuman and degrading treatment." But the big plastic placed along the border has not held more than three months. The first significant rain if it is taken away. The same fate has befallen the six bathrooms installed at the side of the clearing dirt and the only source of drinking water in the service of thousands of people. It has not changed anything. Even after the serious incident on 17 November 2008, killed Safia Azizi, a forty-Maghreb years old from Fez, trampled to death by fellow a few seconds after you set foot on English soil. Safia had a degree in Arabic literature. An exception in the world of smuggling, where mostly working mothers banished from the family, wives generally repudiated or illiterate women. In the long unemployed, had moved to Nador in search of better fortune. Dunia, a carrier born in Meknès, was present at the time of the tragedy. "The police opened the gate a few minutes and the first to go were piled at the entrance gates," he recalls in a voice resigned. Then, pointing to the border, change the tone of anger in his eyes and adds, "that gabbia di metallo non sembra fatta per degli esseri umani, assomiglia più ad un mattatoio. La verità è che ci trattano come bestie e, con il passare del tempo, rischiamo davvero di diventarlo”. I passaggi troppo stretti, le lunghe attese e l’impazienza dei corrieri, che cercano di affrettare i tempi per fare più viaggi e aumentare la paga, formano spesso una combinazione pericolosa. Nel Paso Barrio Chino gli affollamenti continuano ad essere una realtà quotidiana e i feriti una conseguenza inevitabile.
“Comercio atipico”
Per Abdelmoumen Chaouki, responsabile della Coordination de la société civile and director of the monthly 'Echo the Rif, "Spain and Morocco are equally responsible for this sad situation, because it would benefit from exhausting work, at constant risk of accidents, without offering in exchange structures appropriate ". To better understand what affects the proceeds of smuggling into the enclave just take a look at the data provided by the English Treasury in 2006. In that year Melilla goods imported from the Iberian Peninsula and from third countries for a total value of € 674 million, of which only 234 were for domestic consumption. The rest was used to power the circuits of the "comercio atypical ' as it is euphemistically called in these parts. As the intro produced by the border in the opposite side, the government of Mohammed VI has never provided any official figures.
The crowd breaks into chaos each day that both sides of the Barrio Chino in reality hides a well established and effective organizational fabric. The products regularly purchased by traders in Melilla, arriving at the port and are immediately stored in adjacent warehouses. Moroccans are then resold to traffickers, who corrupt customs officers and set up networks of intermediaries and porters to transport the packages across the border. Of these only a portion ridotta si ferma a Nador e nelle province del nord, mentre il grosso dei traffici arriva fino ai mercati di Casablanca e Rabat, dove la merce triplica abbondantemente il suo valore. Fouad si occupa del trasferimento dei prodotti dai magazzini del porto fino alla frontiera. “Ogni trafficante segna i suoi pacchi con un numero, in modo che siano facilmente identificabili”, spiega il giovane maghrebino con passaporto spagnolo, intento a sistemare con lo scotch alcune bottiglie di liquori sotto la jellaba di una donna corpulenta. La catena degli intermediari si divide i compiti con precisione millimetrica. “Una volta rientrati in suolo marocchino, i portatori depositano il carico nel camion di un subordinato, che in cambio gli rilascia un biglietto. At the end of the day, then go to collect the money dall'addetto payments. "
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There are many social groups enjoying varying degrees of "comercio atypical and sweat shed by the" turtle "at the border of Melilla. Over four hundred thousand people, according to the American Chamber of Commerce in Casablanca, I derive at least an indirect benefit. The poorest families, who survive thanks to a few dollars of the brackets, Nador traffickers, who exploit their poverty to get rich. By buyers in the capital, who can purchase goods at a price all things considered beneficial to the traders of the port English that without smuggling would be forced to change jobs, given the meager consumption of a city of just 66,000 inhabitants. Stop it, according to the head of Coordination de la société civile "is perhaps a folly," especially in the absence of concrete alternatives. Traffickers and notable fact enjoy the protection and complicity of local authorities. Not to mention that the expense would still be the most disadvantaged, deprived of their only source of livelihood. But as keen to stress the same Chaouki, "such an activity, unstable and dangerous, certainly can not be a desirable pattern of development for the future of our people."
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